I'm not a Linux newbie, and have used Linux over the years for limited applications in my professional life as a hardware developer. I never had occasion to use Linux for my home machines as (until now) I could not duplicate the minimal application suite I had to have until using Mint 13.

So far I have to say that I'm nothing short of VERY impressed with what works. EVERYTHING I needed to do so far has worked seamlessly. A/V applications have been my thorn in the side with every other distro... not so with Mint. I have finally been able to purge my laptop of the hated Windows 7. If everything works as well on my desktops as it has on my laptop I'll purge XP on the rest of the machines too.

+1 It's a great distro, and it's the distro responsible for me making the final switch to a linux desktop on my main machine. I had been using linux for servers and services in my home network for years, but never found a desktop distro I wanted to stick with full time until Mint/Mate.

And I reallly reallly like Mints default software loadout, other distros I always have to remove packages and add my choices, this wasn't the case with Mint as it comes with my favoirte software by default. The only thing I add is the 'gnome-games' package, and obviously that's not an important one.

Thanks Mint Team, keep up the excellent work you do. You made it possible for me to finally ditch Windows. Mint is the first distro that ever got the pleasure of a whole unshared HDD, all to itself on a desktop machine of mine.

And since I've been using it, I've turned on a few others to it, and they are also seeing this as a viable replacement for a rock solid and usable desktop OS. Linux/GNU really is growing and has a shot at a huge, unexpected growth, with the help of distros like Mint.

-Dave

“The only way to fix Linux is to take one distro, one set of components as a baseline, abandon everything else and everyone should just contribute to this single Linux..."

Just posting to agree with the sentiment of the original post. I too messed about with Linux off and on for a few years but never really felt comfortable with it and always ended up returning to Windows. installed Mint dual boot with win 7, then there was about a month of not booting into Windows and I realized I had finally found a distro that, for my uses and tastes, is perfect. I waited for the next release of mint, which fortunately was a LTS edition, formatted my computer (after backing up a couple of bits and pieces) and installed Maya as the only OS. Haven't looked back, the only thing I miss from Windows is being able to use Ableton (I haven't managed to get it working in wine) and that problem will disappear once Bitwig Studio is finally released.

So yeah, thanks a bunch to the Mint team. Truly an elegant operating system.

I have tried several distros, and Mint was the only one that just worked, no hassles, no fiddling. The worst thing was deciding which DE to use, they are all wonderful, and all worked easily. I finally settled on MATE, seems the most comfortable. I came from Windows 7, and though it was the best I have seen from MSN, Linux is such a wonderful change! I feel like I have a new system, and feel excited about computing again. So much to learn and experience, so many options!

Not sure there are too many 'gals' about though, looking at lots of Linux sites, seems to be 99% men in the community?

4w6gte wrote:.....the only thing I miss from Windows is being able to use Ableton (I haven't managed to get it working in wine) and that problem will disappear once Bitwig Studio is finally released.

I'm new to Linux this year. I starting with Mint 12 and eventually settling on Mint 13/Mate. I've tried all the various DE's and my favourite is the KDE environment, but my computer unfortunately doesn't like it very much. Mate has been flawless. I still have Windows XP on my partitioned drive solely because of some of the programs I use for recording and performing which for me, works better in a Windows environment. These programs are:

Band In a BoxAudacity (works better in Windows as opposed to Linux because of my sound card)External USB Sound Card MixerPok software (to program and control my computer/Audacity during performances)Winamp (to update/sync music on my android phone)Other misc. software that uses midi and/or there's no Linux equivalent.

I've tried Wine several times and it's just too wanky. What does work quite well is running Windows inside Virtualbox which I'm experimenting with. If all goes according to plan, I hope to get rid of my Windows partition which will allow me to expand the capacity of the Virtualbox drive.

Yep, I got it working in Virtualbox without a problem. Since it was all new to me, I originally set it up with 10 GB of space (the default). This was fine for loading programs, but not enough space for my recorded files (which resides in Dropbox). It's a bit of a tricky process to expand the virtual drive and from what I've read, the latest version of Virtualbox allows you to do it (supposedly). Nonetheless, I decided to delete all of it and start over again.

I currently have the latest version of Virtualbox installed (using the package manager), but haven't had time to reinstall Windows. I hope to do that over the weekend.

4w6gte wrote:..... the only thing I miss from Windows is being able to use Ableton (I haven't managed to get it working in wine) and that problem will disappear once Bitwig Studio is finally released.

So yeah, thanks a bunch to the Mint team. Truly an elegant operating system.

I'd like to throw this out there to everyone who has software they use that is not available on Linux; go after the developers of your software!

Make your voice heard, ask "Why is there not a linux version available??". Ask this a lot to whoever you want. And ask for a ".deb" installer while you're at it, so they don't just give you a tar.gz that will never compile easily.

(Google, the half-evil entity that it is, offers .deb installers for most of their wares. Other devs should take the hint.)

But long story short, if you make your software's devs aware that there are people out there using Debian built Linux and not Windows, they will start to consider making their software available to our user base.

Happy Computing.-Dave

-Dave

“The only way to fix Linux is to take one distro, one set of components as a baseline, abandon everything else and everyone should just contribute to this single Linux..."

4w6gte wrote:..... the only thing I miss from Windows is being able to use Ableton (I haven't managed to get it working in wine) and that problem will disappear once Bitwig Studio is finally released.

So yeah, thanks a bunch to the Mint team. Truly an elegant operating system.

I'd like to throw this out there to everyone who has software they use that is not available on Linux; go after the developers of your software!

Make your voice heard, ask "Why is there not a linux version available??". Ask this a lot to whoever you want. And ask for a ".deb" installer while you're at it, so they don't just give you a tar.gz that will never compile easily.-Dave

Here's a stab at why a lot of software isn't ported. Many people use the new .net paradigm of programming instead of C.

4w6gte wrote:..... the only thing I miss from Windows is being able to use Ableton (I haven't managed to get it working in wine) and that problem will disappear once Bitwig Studio is finally released.

So yeah, thanks a bunch to the Mint team. Truly an elegant operating system.

I'd like to throw this out there to everyone who has software they use that is not available on Linux; go after the developers of your software!

Make your voice heard, ask "Why is there not a linux version available??". Ask this a lot to whoever you want. And ask for a ".deb" installer while you're at it, so they don't just give you a tar.gz that will never compile easily.-Dave

Here's a stab at why a lot of software isn't ported. Many people use the new .net paradigm of programming instead of C.

We can use .net wares here. , it's called mono. I remember reading an article from an ex-microsoft dev gone GNU, and his main point was we need to do more coding in mono, and less in C.

-Dave

“The only way to fix Linux is to take one distro, one set of components as a baseline, abandon everything else and everyone should just contribute to this single Linux..."

I suppose this thread is the best place to finally add my thanks and declare my undying love for Mint along with all you other great folks. I've been using Linux almost exclusively since Red Hat Linux 6 around '98, for my development workstation as well as my home gaming box and my laptop, which I split between coding at work and coding/gaming at home. Although I liked Red Hat and the myriad of other distros I've tried to a lesser or greater degree, I came to find Ubuntu last year and, although looked down upon by many people who don't consider it a platform capable of performing well for development, I disagree. It was pretty cool, simple and extensible. While I'll always have a special place in my heart for ``hardcore'' distros like Gentoo and Arch, and the beloved Slackware, Ubuntu was fun, popular and easy to use, without a lot of customization. But like many before and after me, I had problems with multimedia apps and detested having to install the "Ubuntu Restricted *" packages among others just to be able to watch a movie on youtube or listen to an mp3 file.

Then I found the illustrious and simply *beautiful* Mint. And I felt like Romeo upon first glimpsing the beauteous Juliet; I was smitten--I had found my OS soulmate It lived up to its motto; it ``just worked'', right out of the box. No need to install or uninstall any other packages, no need to change a bunch of conf files or do any administrative contortions just to be able to enjoy my system: I just partition my HD, fill in my desired user name and hit the Install button, and sure enough, half an hour later I've got a working Linux box! ASTOUNDING! Anyway, I'm VERY happy with the distro as a whole and I wish to extend my *deepest* gratitude and admiration to the entire Mint team and to all my fellow Mint users who continue to ensure that Mint is the leading and the best distro ever! Thank you! Mint is the distro I wish I had when I first found Linux and the FOSS community. It would've saved me and I'm sure millions of others numerous headaches and heartache. Again, THANK YOU! And btw, I feel incredibly sorry for Micro$oft and its horribly contrived Windows 7/8. Bill Gates and Wozniak no longer can monopolize the OS world, as they never should have in the first place. This is the FOSS generation and I'm *proud* to be a part of it. THANKS MINT!

"One OS to rule them all,One OS to find them.One OS to call them allAnd in salvation bind them!In the bright land of Linux,Where the Hackers play."

4w6gte wrote:..... the only thing I miss from Windows is being able to use Ableton (I haven't managed to get it working in wine) and that problem will disappear once Bitwig Studio is finally released.

So yeah, thanks a bunch to the Mint team. Truly an elegant operating system.

I'd like to throw this out there to everyone who has software they use that is not available on Linux; go after the developers of your software!

Make your voice heard, ask "Why is there not a linux version available??". Ask this a lot to whoever you want. And ask for a ".deb" installer while you're at it, so they don't just give you a tar.gz that will never compile easily.

This is perhaps the *best* advice I've heard in a LOOOONG time! The more we let developers know we want Linux support the quicker we'll get it. Here here! I second this opinion

"One OS to rule them all,One OS to find them.One OS to call them allAnd in salvation bind them!In the bright land of Linux,Where the Hackers play."